The easier part at the Joy FM Valentine’s Day concert with Kojo Antwi was spending money for a ticket.
The harder part was deciding in the euphoria when to go home. 10pm? 12pm? or 1am?
Once again we have proof that love is not how much money you can spend on a partner but how much time you can spend with her – of course at this concert.
And so sprawled across the Ballroom at Kempinski hotel in Accra sat 400 lovers, working-towards-becoming-lovers and making-up-after-breaking-up lovers.
A Chinese couple, squinty eyes, knowing very well the maestro never sang any song in their language were there. Perhaps with the understanding that the musical notes was for this night, the alphabets offering meaning into Kojo Antwi’s songs.
NPP and NDC MPs who have for a year disagreed over whether Kennedy Agyapong was right to say Parliament was useless, were there and agreed, the concert was useful.
They were united and they were right.
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A couple whose body had outgrown transient beauty but whose marriage had outfoxed the deforming power of test and trials, sat calmly like experienced winners.
Prepared for Kojo Antwi, few were prepared with quite a show-stealing comedy by Ramsey. The proud Ashiaman boy remarked that he is very popular but people don’t know him – the contradiction drawing a quick first laugh.
And then he began shaking tables by asking the men who came with their wives to raise their hands. Let’s just say, it raised more laughter than hands.
Kojo Antwi with his trademark dreadlocks heaped and packed in a scarf jumped on stage in his bold wine African print and white trouser.
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The man who has since 1986, dominated the airwaves had no airs. But he had three dancers.
Dancers who had stockpiled carbohydrates in provocative places and who wriggled much to a somewhat jealous admiration of a beautiful slim fit lady, obviously anatomically incompetent at such sensual ability.
It was never going to be difficult for Kojo Antwi to draw lovers from their seats to the rectangular floor. Never.
Songs sang decades ago still had the power of hypnotism and vintage old wine. The ladies showed a greater urgency to hit the dance floor than the men who nonetheless complied with feminine commands to come dance.
Obedience this night is every man’s way for getting his subject verb agreement right if he is to get a good night.
They obeyed.
Some men burdened by quite impressive pot bellies had the simple task in dancing. Just swing the obvious mass to the left, to the right and that was it.
An old and noticeably introvert husband, of some say 25 years in marriage, offered some undeniably Pentecostal dance moves as compensation for his animated wife’s persistent urge to come dance.
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She took pictures as they did so and was all over him when they got back to their seats trying to show him the photos preserved for the days when the nest becomes empty.
And there was a European man with his younger Ghanaian partner. He had excusable difficulty in understanding the songs but had inexcusable difficulty in stringing a few coordinated bodily movement also called dancing.
Kojo Antwi not to be intimidated by fresh talent had no inhibitions when he introduced King Promise, the young man visibly grateful and gesturing his own humility in several bows and salutes to the legend.
He would do his hit song ‘Abena’, the most used Ghanaian name in love songs.
The ladies could not help plucking out their recording phones which became their make-shift mirrors through which they adjusted their dance moves or get a shifting bra to behave.
For the ladies who were not in thick of things on the dance floor, they would suddenly find the air-condition conditioning them into a coldness enough to gently recline their heads into a broad chest nearby.
The maestro would come back to perform any song request from his admirers. That’s how we got to dance to ‘Tom and Jerry’ and 2002 hit songs, ‘Kakayi’ and ‘Amirika’.
And with remarkable energy, this singing and dancing went well into the night.
1am
And gently, the lovers drove off from the hotel premises enveloped into the invisibility of darkness and into places where no Joy FM camera can dare to follow.
